I don't get it. You said $37M in sales for the $40M jackpot, so it was underfunded by $4.1M (including small prizes I'm assuming). But don't they include previous week's sales beginning from $10M? If they include those how would it have been underfunded? They got $37M in sales just from this week alone!

Only a portion of sales goes towards the jackpot. Half of sales goes towards profit and expenses. In the May 28 draw, about $10 million was allocated to the jackpot. The funded portion of the jackpot in the previous draw was $26 million. Then it went to $36 million for the May 28 draw leaving a shortfall of about $4 million.

The June 4 jackpot will be fully funded by sales. The amount of sales will determine how many MaxMillions prizes will be awarded (unless they decide to add extra prizes).

The Powerball jackpot reached $261.6 million and was won - one winning ticket. Group T1 won $3 - the ticket matched the bonus number. The group will now wait for the Mega Millions or Powerball jackpots to get big again.

From time to time, I tend to hear stories about betting superstitions. In particular, ones about a person who doesn't return a mispurchase (wanting to buy 10 dollars, retailer prints 20 dollars) because of the chance that ticket might be THE ticket.

The tales and the sticking to those beliefs sound so frivolous and silly. Well, now it has some traction:

Patron blows $30-million jackpot by returning ticket

The Canadian Press

Date: Thursday Jun. 3, 2010 2:32 PM ET

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — The Atlantic Lottery Corp. promises that winning one of its popular games will allow you to "Live your dreams to the MAX."

But someone in a small community near St. John's, N.L., narrowly missed that chance when they forfeited a Lotto Max ticket worth a whopping $30 million.

Jennifer Dalton, a spokeswoman for the corporation, said Thursday that someone decided not to buy a Lotto Max ticket after walking into the Corner Store in Goulds last month.

The person asked for a ticket but returned it to the clerk, who followed company procedures and voided it -- only to find out days later that it was for the jackpot.

"When we found out about it, there was a little disappointment for sure," Dalton said.

"Having a $30-million jackpot winner here would have brought great things for us and it would have been really great for us to celebrate."

Dalton said they discovered what happened after checking the winning numbers against all tickets, including those that had been voided.

She said there are 52,000 voided tickets every month in Atlantic Canada, but she didn't know of one with such a hefty prize.

A woman working at the convenience store Thursday said the cashier had accidentally printed a $27 ticket and voided it when the customer said they had wanted one worth about $10.

"We're very sorry for the person," said the woman, who didn't want her name used. "No one has come forward."

Dalton said the loser, or almost-winner, could take another run at it this Friday when the jackpot will be $50 million.

That is an interesting story. I was aware the lottery companies check all cancelled tickets to determine if there are any major wins amount them.

What surprised me is Atlantic Lottery released the information to the public. This type of information will only encourage people to claim the cancelled ticket and try to blame the clerk for the mistake. I am sure that Atlantic Lottery has already received several claims for that ticket.

On the other hand, maybe Atlantic Lottery sees the news release as a means for increasing sales and speeding up the ticket buying process. Fewer customers will now ask for tickets to be cancelled. I doubt though, if this situation was analyzed to that extent. I also doubt the potential increased sales offsets the costs of defending the claims on the cancelled ticket.

This reminds me of a situation that occurred while I worked at OLG. At that time, the Encore number was only 6 digits (a total of 1,000,000 unique numbers). There was no advanced play on Encore then so the central computer was programmed to print a unique Encore number on every ticket until all 1,000,000 combinations were played. When all the combinations were used up, the computer would start issuing duplicate numbers but still programmed to use up all combinations a second time before issuing triplicates.

I noticed on a particular draw that Encore sales had exceeded 1 million tickets but there was no Encore jackpot winner. That is, no ticket matched all 6 digits even though all combinations had been covered.

This appeared to indicate a discrepancy on the integrity of the game. This may have been caused by a flaw in the computer program that issued the Encore numbers or in the computer program that checked for winning tickets. Since the integrity of the lottery games was within my area of responsibility, I brought the situation to the attention of the audit department.

They informed me that yes, all Encore numbers had been issued but the “winning” ticket was cancelled. The computer was programmed to not reissue an Encore number that had previously appeared on a cancelled ticket.

So someone lost out on a $250,000 prize. But OLG’s response at the time was to not release the details to the public.

The groups won 2 free tickets in the Lotto Max June 4 draw. The six regular groups will buy tickets for the $50 million Lotto Max jackpot draw on June 11.

The Lotto Max jackpot is currently the largest jackpot in the world.

The Lotto Max jackpot for the June 4 draw was not won and remained at $50 million plus an estimated 20 MaxMillions prizes. Only 1 of the 5 MaxMillions prizes were won. Sales at $65.2 million were 76% higher than the previous week. The jackpot, including the MaxMillions prizes, were under funded by sales by $1.5 million and the payout was 49%.

This is only the fourth time the jackpot reached $50 million and the first time it was $50 million two weeks in a row.

Couple of reasons. First, and most important, I am not promoting the game. The odds are high in comparison to the prizes. Even with the 20 MaxMillions prizes in the June 11 draw, I estimate the payout will be only around 60%. When we buy Lotto 649 tickets, the payout is at least 80% and sometimes close to 100%. The regular groups are buying some tickets because there have been so few opportunities lately to buy Lotto 649 tickets.

Second, I am trying to keep to a minimum the number of groups currently on the go especially since there are shares available in some of the regular groups. I do not want to disappoint my regular members. They have been paying into the groups each month on a regular basis and then, they are required to spend more money to participate in a temporary group, while the regular groups are holding lots of money.

The June 11 Lotto Max draw is expected to set a new sales record. Sales are predicted to top $75 million beating the previous sales record of $67 million. This will result in at least 24 MaxMillions prizes of $1 million each rather than the advertised estimate of 20 prizes.

Even with sales at $75 million, the jackpot is more likely to roll once again given the long odds of the game.

The Lotto Max jackpot for the June 11 draw was not won and remained at $50 million plus an estimated 45 MaxMillions prizes. 15 of the 27 MaxMillions prizes were won. Sales at $90 million were 38% higher than the previous week and set a sales record. The previous sales record was $67 million.

The jackpot, including the MaxMillions prizes, were fully funded by sales and the payout was 61%.

This is only the fifth time the jackpot reached $50 million and the first time it was $50 million three weeks in a row.

The six regular groups will buy tickets for the Lotto Max draw on June 18. The jackpot is $50 million plus 45 additional $1 million prizes. The groups' results for the June 11 draw will be posted later today.